According to Stars and Stripes, Hair was told that the Reagan was just 5-10 miles off the coast of Fukushima. The paper also reported that:
"Sailors were drinking desalinated seawater and bathing in it until the ship's leadership came over the public address system and told them to stop because it was contaminated, Hair said. They were told the ventilation system was contaminated, and he claims he was pressured into signing a form that said he had been given an iodine pill even though none had been provided. As a low-ranking sailor, he believed he had no choice.
"The Navy has acknowledged that the Reagan passed through a plume of radiation but declined to comment on the details in Hair's story."
Most of the sick sailors are in their early twenties
There's no apparent reason to doubt that there are sick sailors, not all of them part of the lawsuit, but all of them with a common source of exposure from Fukushima. Two other plaintiffs, Maurice Enis and his girlfriend, Jaime Plym, held a press conference on March 11, 2013, that was part of a symposium at the New York Academy of Medicine dealing with the medical and ecological consequences of Fukushima. Enis and Plym both served on the Reagan, as the Huffington Post reported:
"The couple had been looking forward to leaving the military and starting a family. Now, Enis said, they don't know if children will be an option due to health problems they've both developed since signing away government liability. They've both been honorably discharged from the military and don't know how they will pay for medical treatment. Plym has a new diagnosis of asthma and her menstrual cycle is severely out of whack. Enis has lumps on his jaw, between his eyes and on his thigh. He's also developed stomach ulcers and lung problems, and is losing weight and hair."
In all, the Pentagon sent some 70,000 American military personnel to serve in or near Japan in response to Fukushima during the period from March 12 to May 11, 2011. And in 2011, the Dept. of Defense set out to do the right thing for these men and women who may have been exposed to harmful levels of radiation. The Defense Dept. announced plans to establish the Operation Tomodachi Registry to help these people track their health histories, an initiative pushed by Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. According to the Pentagon:
"The DOD may establish an environmental health surveillance registry when: 1) occupational and environmental health exposures could cause illness, or 2) when the exposure is not expected to cause illness, but individuals need access to exposure data. In either case, these registries will contain the names of all the individuals who were known or believed to have been exposed along with estimates of their exposure."
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